Han Solo: The Smuggler Adventures
by NathanThompson
Summary: Before Episode IV: A New Hope, Han Solo takes a smuggling job to steal a crate of lightsabers from Coruscant and smuggle them to Tatooine. But after escaping, he is targeted by the Empire as well as bounty hunter, Boba Fett. Teaming up with a Kaminoan as well as Chewbacca, he struggles to navigate across the galaxy with a broken navigation computer and deliver the stolen cargo


I woke up in a cold sweat. It was dark. The ship's instruments hummed quietly to itself. It was raining outside but that was anything but news. _The Millenium Falcon_ had gone into standby mode in an attempt to conserve energy, and the lights turned off. I managed to stand and stumble over to the cockpit, blindly looking for the right switch in the dark. Little light came in from the windshield but it was enough to find the right one. The lights turned back on and I remembered I wasn't wearing any pants. I picked them up from the floor and slipped in one leg at a time, finding my blaster in the right pocket. I sat it down for a minute and after I was fully dressed, slid it back into its place.

Suddenly I heard a sound. It wasn't the instruments or the rain. It sounded like a voice. I did a quick sweep of the ship, looking around for anything that could be making the sound but found nothing. When I got to the cargo hold, however, I heard the voice again. It was louder than before. I checked to make sure the cargo, a dozen stolen lightsabers, were still in their steel box. After finding them safe and sound, I continued to investigate the voice. I pushed the button that opened the cargo door but it took a bit. The wiring was old and delayed it by about five seconds. When it opened the ramp protruded out from the ship and sunk an inch or two into the island's soil. I was on a small island on Kamino, hiding out from the wide array of bounty hunters that were after me.

I wouldn't normally steal things, especially weapons like lightsabers, but the guy who wanted them seemed desperate. He was an old man I met while in Tatooine, his name was Kenobi or something like it. I was pretty convinced at this point someone had found my ship and was here to arrest me. I grabbed hold of my blaster.

I took one step out of the ship and onto the ramp. The sound of the rain was a lot louder now. I took a second step. Lightning flashed across the sky and thunder immediately followed. I took a third step but then jerked to the left, aiming my gun at the figure that emerged from the shadow of the falcon. He was an unarmed Kaminoan, as most of them were. He disregarded my blaster as if it wasn't a threat. "Hello," He said, "You aren't with the Empire are you?"

I shook my head, lowering my gun partially. "No, I'm a smuggler. I've been hiding out here for the last few days, trying to lay low. There are more than a few people that want me dead." I said this then raised my gun again, "Do you have a problem with that?"

"No," he said. "In fact I need your help. I just escaped from the cloning facility. The Empire has enslaved our people to make their army but I managed to get away. They will be looking for me. Please take me with you, Tipoca City is not far from here."

I was caught off guard by the request but was more worried about what he said first, "The Empire is stationed here?"

He nodded, "Yes. They are planning to take over the galaxy with a new clone army. But they are after me and I need your help."

"Wait, has anyone been looking for a smuggler? The may have also described him as a tall man with good looks." I questioned.

"Well, there was a man in a green suit passing through just a few hours before I escaped. He wore a helmet and had a rifle too, I believe. He said he was looking for a Han Solo." I looked off into the distance, the capital city visible on the horizon.

"Do you think anyone followed you?"

"Not that I know of, but please Sir you have to help me. I can't go back to that place. They have no mercy, they will kill me for running away."

I sighed. "Alright, get in the ship. But don't touch anything."

"Thank you very much, stranger! Thank you ever so much," He began to blubber.

He followed me up the ramp and I closed the door behind us. I climbed up to the cockpit and he followed me, strapping himself into the co-pilot seat. His head hit the ceiling. I fired up the engine and we were about to take off when the screen nearest to me flickered off. I tapped the glass a few times just to be sure. "Oh, damn it. The nav comp is broken."

"Nav comp means navigation computer, and a nav comp are essential for calculations of coordinates, which is necessary to use a hyperdrive... right?"

"Right, and without it we're not getting anywhere anytime soon. I'll have to take a look at it." I got up from my seat but then I noticed a speck of color in the sky. It was the _Slave I_, Boba Fett's ship. He was the bounty hunter the Kaminoan had described. "Okay, well it looks like we're going to have to wing this. Do you know where Tatooine is?" I asked him.

"No, sorry. I'm not very familiar with astronomy. Are you?" He asked.

"Not this part," I said, "But we need to get out of here regardless."

The engine fired up again and I overrided the automatic shutdown the broken navigation computer attempted to cause. The Falcon had a lot of strange bugs in its system, but no matter how much of a hunk of junk it was, it was fast and that's all that mattered. We lifted off the ground and began accelerating quickly into the sky, flying straight upwards.

Fett had already began firing at us with deadly precision. Each shot hit us in just the right spot, hurting the armor. "Do you know anything about flying?" I asked. "Because I need you to drop a few mines to slow down the bounty hunter trying to kill us."

"Can't you do it?" He asked in a shaky tone.

"No, the switch is on the other side of the cockpit. Look, there's a switch right above you that should say 'mine dump,' alright?" I instructed.

"Okay, here it is." He said, flipping the switch.

"No... we didn't want to flip that one. I wanted you to flip the one beside it that only dropped one mine at a time, now we've wasted all of our mines!" The explosion behind us was so loud I could hear it clear as day inside the ship. While it was a waste of our ammunition, it definately took out Fett. We tore through the atmosphere and exited into space, running into a fleet of TIE fighters on their way to Kamino. "Haha," I laughed, attempting to turn on the hyperdrive. Then I remembered the navigation was broken. I frowned. "Hold on, this might get bumpy." I sped up and lifted harshly, the falcon flying over them and then flipping around to fire at their behind. The blasts tore through most of them, but the rest had managed to turn around and arm their own weapons.

I pushed down and the ship plummeted, the TIE's flying overhead. I maneuvered back again and fired another spray at them. The final TIE's exploded in a shower of sparks and metal. "You're an experienced pilot." The Kaminoan said. "That should keep us alive."

I flipped a few switches and turned the ship around. "It's going to take more than experience to avoid getting killed. I'm going to land on one of the three moons orbiting Kowloon and see if I can fix this thing. If I try to fix it now I won't be at the controls and we'll be sitting ducks." He pointed to the nearest moon, which looked like an arctic planet.

"That's Karosa, it should be a sufficient hiding place if we don't stay too long. The Empire won't know to look for us there but it snows so badly we might be burried in it by the time we get it fixed." He said.

"Don't worry, we'll make this fast. I know everything about this ship, I know exactly what I'm doing."


End file.
